Holy Roman Empire, Career Of Charlemagne

Holy Roman Empire, The
Career Of Charlemagne

Author: Guizot, Francois P. G.

Part I.

772 - 814

In Charles, the son of Pepin the Short, later known as Charlemagne, or

Charles the Great, the Carlovingians saw the culminating glory of their line,

while in French history the splendor of his name outshines that of all other

rulers. It seemed an act of fate that his brother and joint heir to the

Frankish kingdom should die and leave the monarchy wholly in his hands, for

his genius was to prove equal to its field of action.

The kingdom which Charlemagne inherited was great in extent, lying

mainly between the Loire and the Rhine, including Alemannia and Burgundy,

while his sphere of influence - to use the modern phrase - covered many

provinces and districts over which his rule was wholly or in part

acknowledged - Aquitaine, Bavaria, Brittany, Frisia, Thuringia, and others.

To enlarge still further the bounds of his kingdom was the task to which

the young monarch at once addressed himself, and upon which he entered with

all the advantages of family prestige, a commanding and engaging personality,

proven courage and skill in war, as well as talent and accomplishments in

civil affairs.

The central purpose of Charlemagne, to the service of which all his

policies and his conduct were directed, was the maintenance of the Christian

religion as embodied in the Western Church, whose great champion he became,

and in that character occupies his lofty place in the history of Europe and

of the world. At this period the two great powers in the Christian world

were the Roman pontiff and the Frankish king; and when, on Christmas Day,

A.D. 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans, and in the

Holy Roman Empire restored the Western Empire, extinct since 476, he welded

church and state in what long proved to be indissoluble bonds, somewhat - it

must be added - to the chagrin of the Byzantine emperors of the Eastern Roman

Empire at Constantinople. This was an event the significance of which only

later times could learn to estimate. The Holy Roman Empire henceforth held a

leading part in the world's affairs, the influence of which is still active

in the survivals of its power among nations.

Charlemagne served the Church and fulfilled his own purposes through the

military subjugation of all whom he could overcome among the barbarians and

heathens of his time. And the powers which he gained as conqueror he

exercised with equal ability and steadfastness of purpose in his capacity as

foremost secular ruler in the world. By the union of the Teutonic with the

Roman interests, and of northern vigor with the culture of the South, it is

considered by the historians of our own day that Charlemagne proved himself

the beginner of a new era - in fact, as Bryce declares, of modern history

itself.

Gibbon has said that of all the heroes to whom the title of "the Great"

has been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to

his name.

The most judicious minds are sometimes led blindly by tradition and

habit, rather than enlightened by reflection and experience. Pepin the Short

committed at his death the same mistake that his father, Charles Martel, had

committed: he divided his dominions between his two sons, Charles and

Carloman, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy

which his father and he had been at so much pains to establish. But, just as

had already happened in 746 through the abdication of Pepin's brother, events

discharged the duty of repairing the mistake of men. After the death of

Pepin, and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insurrection broke out once

more in Aquitaine; and the old duke, Hunald, issued from his monastery in the

island of Rhe to try and recover power and independence. Charles and

Carloman marched against him; but, on the march, Carloman, who was jealous

and thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the

expedition, taking away his troops. Charles was obliged to continue it

alone, which he did with complete success. At the end of this first

campaign, Pepin's widow, the queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons;

but an unexpected incident, the death of Carloman two years afterward in 771,

reestablished unity more surely than the reconciliation had reestablished

harmony. For, although Carloman left sons, the grandees of his dominions,

whether laic or ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbeny, between Laon and

Rheims, and proclaimed in his stead his brother Charles, who thus became sole

king of the Gallo-Franco-Germanic monarchy. And as ambition and manners had

become less tinged with ferocity than they had been under the Merovingians,

the sons of Carloman were not killed or shorn or even shut up in a monastery:

they retired with their mother, Gerberge, to the court of Didier, King of the

Lombards. "King Charles," says Eginhard, "took their departure patiently,

regarding it as of no importance." Thus commenced the reign of Charlemagne.

The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this reign, that

which won for him, and keeps for him after more than ten centuries, the name

of great, is the striking variety of his ambition, his faculties, and his

deeds. Charlemagne aspired to and attained to every sort of

greatness - military greatness, political greatness, and intellectual

greatness; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of

poetry. And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general

and monotonous barbarism when, save in the church, the minds of men were dull

and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that

epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage. To

know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be examined under those

various grand aspects, abroad and at home, in his wars and in his government.

From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne

conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Frisians, Bavarians,

Avars, Slavons, and Danes; in Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain,

Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs; two against the Greeks; and

three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and the Britons; in all,

fifty-three expeditions; among which those he undertook against the Saxons,

the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars. It were

undesirable to recount them in detail, for the relation would be monotonous

and useless; but it is obligatory to make fully known their causes, their

characteristic incidents, and their results.

Under the last Merovingian kings, the Saxons were, on the right bank of

the Rhine, in frequent collision with the Franks, especially with the

Austrasian Franks, whose territory they were continually threatening and

often invading. Pepin the Short had more than once hurled them back far from

the very uncertain frontiers of Germanic Austrasia; and, on becoming king, he

dealt his blows still farther, and entered, in his turn, Saxony itself. "In

spite of the Saxon's stout resistance," says Eginhard," he pierced through

the points they had fortified to bar entrance into their country, and, after

having fought here and there battles wherein fell many Saxons, he forced them

to promise that they would submit to his rule; and that every year, to do him

honor, they would send to the general assembly of Franks a present of three

hundred horses. When these conventions were once settled, he insisted, to

insure their performance, upon placing them under the guarantee of rites

peculiar to the Saxons; then he returned with his army to Gaul."

Charlemagne did not confine himself to resuming his father's work; he

before long changed its character and its scope. In 772, being left sole

master of France after the death of his brother Carloman, he convoked at

Worms the general assembly of the Franks, "and took," says Eginhard, "the

resolution of going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without

delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of the fort of

Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called Irminsul." And in

what place was this first victory of Charlemagne won? Near the sources of

the Lippe, just where, more than seven centuries before, the German Arminius

(Herman) had destroyed the legions of Varus, and whither Germanicus had come

to avenge the disaster of Varus. This ground belonged to Saxon territory;

and this idol, called Irminsul, which was thrown down by Charlemagne, was

probably a monument raised in honor of Arminius (Hermann-Seule, or Herman's

pillar), whose name it called to mind. The patriotic and hereditary pride of

the Saxons was passionately roused by this blow; and, the following year,

"thinking to find in the absence of the King the most favorable opportunity,"

says Eginhard, they entered the lands of the Franks, laid them waste in their

turn, and, paying back outrage for outrage, set fire to the church not long

since built at Fritzlar, by Boniface, martyr. From that time the question

changed its aspect; it was no longer the repression of Saxon invasions of

France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks that was to be dealt with;

it was between the Christianity of the Franks and the national paganism of

the Saxons that the struggle was to take place.

For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne regarded the

conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the incursions of

the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity as indispensable

for assuring the conquest of Saxony. The Saxons were defending at one and

the same time the independence of their country and the gods of their

fathers. Here was wherewithal to stir up and foment, on both sides, the

profoundest passions; and they burst forth, on both sides, with equal fury.

Whithersoever Charlemagne penetrated he built strong castles and churches;

and, at his departure, left garrisons and missionaries. When he was gone the

Saxons returned, attacked the forts, and massacred the garrisons and the

missionaries. At the commencement of the struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon

origin, whom St. Willibrod, bishop of Utrecht, had but lately

consecrated - St. Liebwin, in fact - undertook to go and preach the

Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Weser,

amid the general assembly of the Saxons. "What do ye?" said he, cross in

hand; "the idols ye worship live not, neither do they perceive: they are the

work of men's hands; they can do naught either for themselves or for

others. Wherefore the one God, good and just, having compassion on your

errors, hath sent me unto you. If ye put not away your iniquity, I foretell

unto you a trouble that ye do not expect, and that the King of Heaven hath

ordained aforetime: there shall come a prince, strong and wise and

indefatigable, not from afar, but from nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a

torrent, in order to soften your hard hearts and bow down your proud

heads. At one rush he shall invade the country; he shall lay it waste with

fire and sword, and carry away your wives and children into captivity." A

thrill of rage ran through the assembly; and already many of those present

had begun to cut, in the neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to

pierce the priest, when one of the chieftains, named Buto, cried aloud:

"Listen, ye who are the most wise. There have often come unto us

ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons, or Frisians; we

have received them in peace, and when their messages had been heard, they

have been sent away with a present. Here is an ambassador from a great

God, and ye would slay him!" Whether it were from sentiment or from

prudence, the multitude was calmed, or, at any rate, restrained; and for

this time the priest retired safe and sound.

Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to

Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes preserve

the missionaries. The mob, even in the midst of its passions, is not

throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear. The Saxons were not one and

the same nation, constantly united in one and the same assembly, and governed

by a single chieftain. Three populations of the same race, distinguished by

names borrowed from their geographical situation, just as had happened among

the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian

or Eastern Saxons, Westphalian or Western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon

confederation. And to them was often added a fourth people of the same

origin, closer to the Danes, and called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the

northern district of the Elbe. These four principal Saxon populations were

subdivided into a large number of tribes, who had their own particular

chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their conduct and their

fate. Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion and unity

among his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon peoplets

or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of them, according

as he found them inclined to submission or resistance. After having, in four

or five successive expeditions, gained victories and sustained checks, he

thought himself sufficiently advanced in his conquest to put his relations

with the Saxons to a grand trial. In 777, he resolved, says Eginhard, "to go

and hold, at the place called Paderborn (close to Saxony), the general

assembly of this people. On his arrival he found there assembled the senate

and people of this perfidious nation, who, conformably to his orders, had

repaired thither, seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission and

devotion. ... They earned their pardon, but on this condition, however,

that, if hereafter they broke their engagements, they would be deprived of

country and liberty. A great number among them had themselves baptized on

this occasion; but it was with far from sincere intentions that they had

testified a desire to become Christians."

There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon chieftain, called

Wittikind, son of Wernekind, King of the Saxons at the north of the Elbe. He

had espoused the sister of Siegfried, King of the Danes; and he was the

friend of Ratbod, King of the Frisians. A true chieftain at heart as well as

by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as, seven centuries

before, the Cheruscan Herman (Arminius) had been the hero of the Germans.

Instead of repairing to Paderborn, Wittikind had left Saxony, and taken

refuge with his brother-in-law, the King of the Danes. Thence he encouraged

his Saxon compatriots, some to persevere in their resistance, others to

repent them of their show of submission. War began again; and Wittikind

hastened back to take part in it. In 778 the Saxons advanced as far as the

Rhine; but, "not having been able to cross this river," says Eginhard, "they

set themselves to lay waste with fire and sword all the towns and all the

villages from the city of Duitz (opposite Cologne) as far as the confluence

of the Moselle. The churches as well as the houses were laid in ruins from

top to bottom. The enemy, in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing

to show thereby that he had invaded the territory of the Franks, not for

plunder, but for revenge!" For three years the struggle continued, more

confined in area, but more and more obstinate. Many of the Saxon tribes

submitted; many Saxons were baptized; and Siegfried, King of the Danes, sent

to Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind had left

Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen; and, thence

reentering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as fierce as it was

unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten on the banks

of the Weser, and killed in the battle, "together with four counts and twenty

leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed, the Franks were nearly all

exterminated. At news of this disaster," says Eginhard, "Charlemagne,

without losing a moment, reassembled an army and set out for Saxony. He

summoned into his presence all the chieftains of the Saxons, and demanded of

them who had been the promoters of the revolt. All agreed in denouncing

Wittikind as the author of this treason. But as they could not deliver him

up, because immediately after his sudden attack he had taken refuge with the

Northmen, those who, at his instigation, had been accomplices in the crime,

were placed, to the number of four thousand five hundred, in the hands of the

King; and, by his order, all had their heads cut off the same day, at a place

called Werden, on the river Aller. After this deed of vengeance the King

retired to Thionville to pass the winter there."

But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. For three years

Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony, at the cost

of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of conquest and conversion:

"Saxony," he often repeated, "must be Christianized or wiped out." At last,

in 785, after several victories which seemed decisive, he went and settled

down in his strong castle of Ehresburg, "whither he made his wife and

children come, being resolved to remain there all the bad season," says

Eginhard, and applying himself without cessation to scouring the country of

the Saxons and wearing them out by his strong and indomitable determination.

But determination did not blind him to prudence and policy. "Having learned

that Wittikind and Abbio, another great Saxon chieftain, were abiding in the

part of Saxony situated on the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon

envoys to prevail upon them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without

hesitation, and trust themselves to him. They, conscious of what they had

attempted, dared not at first trust to the King's word; but having obtained

from him the promise they desired of impunity, and, besides, the hostages

they demanded as guarantee of their safety, and who were brought to them, on

the King's behalf, by Amalwin, one of the officers of his court, they came

with the said lord and presented themselves before the King in his palace of

Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne had now returned], and there

received baptism."

Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named him Duke of

Saxony, but without attaching to the title any right of sovereignty.

Wittikind, on his side, did more than come to Attigny and get baptized there;

he gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new engagements, and led,

they say, so Christian a life that some chroniclers have placed him on the

list of saints. He was killed in 807, in a battle against Gerold, Duke of

Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Ratisbon. Several families of

Germany hold him for their ancestor; and some French genealogists have,

without solid ground, discovered in him the grandfather of Robert the Strong,

great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may be, after making peace

with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still, for several years, many insurrections

to repress and much rigor to exercise in Saxony, including the removal of

certain Saxon peoplets out of their country, and the establishment of foreign

colonists in the territories thus become vacant; but the great war was at an

end, and Charlemagne might consider Saxony incorporated in his dominions.

He had still, in Germany and all around, many enemies to fight and many

campaigns to reopen. Even among the Germanic populations, which were

regarded as reduced under the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the

Frisians and Saxons, as well as others, were continually agitating for the

recovery of their independence. Farther off, toward the north, east, and

south, people differing in origin and language - Avars, Huns, Slavons,

Bulgarians, Danes, and Northmen - were still pressing or beginning to press

upon the frontiers of the Frankish dominion, for the purpose of either

penetrating within or settling at the threshold as powerful and formidable

neighbors. Charlemagne had plenty to do, with the view at one time of

checking their incursions, and at another of destroying or hurling back to a

distance their settlements; and he brought his usual vigor and perseverance

to bear on this second struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had

attained his direct national object: the great flood of population from east

to west came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic dominion as against

an insurmountable rampart.

This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this

epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. While he was

incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his father

Pepin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new King of the

Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered upon a new war; and

Didier was besieging Rome, which was energetically defended by the Pope and

its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid of the King of the Franks,

whom his envoys succeeded, not without difficulty, in finding at Thionville.

Charlemagne could not abandon the grand position left him by his father as

protector of the papacy and as patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover,

wrested by Didier from the Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by

conquest from King Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne

was besides, on his own account, on bad terms with the King of the Lombards,

whose daughter, Desiree, he had married, and afterward repudiated and sent

home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation.

Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on

whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and careful

of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy blow,

Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the King of the

Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at once set to work,

convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva, in the autumn of 773,

gained them over, not without encountering some objections, to the projected

Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign with two armies.

One was to cross the Valais and descend upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard;

Charlemagne in person led the other, by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the

outlet of the passes of the Alps, offered a vigorous resistance; but when the

second army had penetrated into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier,

threatened in his rear, retired precipitately, and, driven from position to

position, was obliged to go and shut himself up in Pavia, the strongest place

in his kingdom, whither Charlemagne, having received on the march the

submission of the principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came

promptly to besiege him.

Part II.

To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old chronicle will

serve better than any modern description to show the impression of admiration

and fear produced upon his contemporaries by Charlemagne, his person and his

power. At the close of this ninth century a monk of the abbey of St. Gall,

in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth of one of Charlemagne's

warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his campaigns and his life. These

stories are full of fabulous legends, puerile anecdotes, distorted

reminiscences and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a

credulity and exaggeration of language which raise a smile; but they reveal

the state of men's minds and fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's

influence and at the sight of him. This monk gives a naive account of

Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia, and of the King of the Lombard's

disquietude at his approach. Didier had with him at that time one of

Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent

place in the romances and epopoeias, relating to chivalry, of that age.

Ogier had quarrelled with his great chief and taken refuge with the King of

the Lombards. It is probable that his Danish origin and his relations with

the King of the Danes, Gottfried, for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had

something to do with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that may

have been, "when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk calls him) heard that the

dread monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height whence they

could watch his arrival from afar off and from every quarter. They say,

first of all, engines of war such as must have been necessary for the armies

of Darius or Julius Caesar. 'Is not Charles,' asked Didier of Ogger, 'with

his great army?' But the other answered, 'No.' The Lombard, seeing

afterward an immense body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast

empire, said to Ogger, 'Certes, Charles advanceth in triumph in the midst of

this throng.' 'No, not yet; he will not appear so soon,' was the answer.

'What should we do, then,' rejoined Didier, who began to be perturbed,

'should he come accompanied by a larger band of warriors?' 'You will see

what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger, 'but as to what will become of us,

I know nothing.' As they were thus parleying appeared the body of guards

that knew no repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread,

cried, 'This time 'tis surely Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In

their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal,

and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day or

to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide ourselves in

the bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a

foe.' Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power

and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude in

better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the crops shaking for fear in

the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the walls of the

city with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may ye think that

Charles is coming.' He had not ended these words when there began to be seen

in the west, as it were a black cloud, raised by the northwest wind or by

Boreas, which turned the brightest day into awful shadows. But as the

Emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of arms caused to shine on the

people shut up within the city a day more gloomy than any kind of night. And

then appeared Charles himself, that man of steel, with his head encased in a

helmet of steel, his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of

steel and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his

left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft in the air, for as

to his right hand he kept that continually on the hilt of his invincible

sword. The outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their greater ease in

mounting a-horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore

encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots? All

the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his buckler there was

naught to be seen but steel; his horse was of the color and the strength of

steel. All those who went before the monarch, all those who marched at his

side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of the army had armor

of the like sort, so far as the means of each permitted. The fields and the

highways were covered with steel: the points of steel reflected the rays of

the sun; and this steel, so hard, was borne by a people with hearts still

harder. The flash of steel spread terror throughout the streets of the city.

'What steel! alack, what steel! Such were the bewildered cries the citizens

raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel;

and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor

tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long

description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here

is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words he fell

down almost lifeless."

The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong. They showed

more firmness and valor than he ascribes to them; they resisted Charlemagne

obstinately, and repulsed his first assaults so well that he changed the

siege into an investment, and settled down before Pavia, as if making up his

mind for a long operation. His camp became a town; he sent for Queen

Hildegarde and her court; and he had a chapel built where he celebrated the

festival of Christmas. But on the arrival of spring, close upon the festival

of Easter, 774, wearied with the duration of the investment, he left to his

lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and, attended by a numerous and

brilliant following, set off for Rome, whither the Pope was urgently pressing

him to come.

On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three miles from

Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city, sent forward by the Pope to

meet him; at one mile all the municipal bodies and the pupils of the schools

carrying palm branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of the city, the

cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and patricians. At sight

of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome on foot, ascended the steps

of the ancient basilica of St. Peter, repeating at each step a sign of

respectful piety, and was received at the top by the Pope himself. All

around him and in the streets a chant was sung, "Blessed be he that cometh in

the name of the Lord!" At his entry and during his sojourn at Rome,

Charlemagne gave the most striking proofs of Christian faith and respect for

the head of the Church. According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all

the basilicas, and in that of Sta. Maria Maggiore he performed his solemn

devotions. Then, passing to temporal matters, he caused to be brought and

read over, in his private conferences with the Pope, the deed of territorial

gift made by his father Pepin to Stephen II, and with his own lips dictated

the confirmation of it, adding thereto a new gift of certain territories

which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the Lombards. Pope

Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a mixture of affection and

dignity, all the honors and all the services which could at one and the same

time satisfy and exalt the King and the priest, the protector and the

protected. He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a collection of the

canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the Church, and he put at

the beginning of the book, which was dedicated to Charlemagne, an address in

forty five irregular verses, written with his own hand, which formed an

anagram: "Pope Adrian to his most excellent son, Charlemagne, king" (Domino

excellentissimo filio Carolo Magno regi, Hadrianus papa). At the same time

he encouraged him to push his victory to the utmost and make himself king of

the Lombards, advising him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with the

Frankish dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be

thus absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of "King of the

Franks and Lombards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this wise advice;

for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in the hour of

victory. Three years afterward he even did more than Pope Adrian had

advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pepin, whom in 781

Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by the Pope, thus

separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms, and restoring

to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure that so long as he

lived the unity of his different dominions would not be imperilled. Having

thus regulated at Rome his own affairs and those of the Church, he returned

to his camp, took Pavia, received the submission of all the Lombard dukes and

counts, save one only, Aregisius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France

again, taking with him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a

monastery, first at Liege and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard,

say the chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion.

The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the

head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the spectacles

he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised over him, his

plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough Frankish warrior,

chief of a people who were beginning to make a brilliant appearance upon the

stage of the world, and issue himself of a new line, had a taste for what was

grand, splendid, ancient, and consecrated by time and public respect; he

understood and estimated at its full worth the moral force and importance of

such allies. He departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to

subdue Saxony, to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power,

and to promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish

Christian dominion.

Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in

Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which

Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a

more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard,

"came to this town, to present himself before the King. He had arrived from

Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the King of

the Franks himself and all the towns which the King of the Saracens had

confided to his keeping." For a long time past the Christians of the West

had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, the name of Saracens. Ibn-al-Arabi

was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish-Arab chieftains in league

against Abdel-Rhaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad caliphs, who, with the

assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. Amid the

troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi summoned to his aid,

against Abdel-Rhaman, the Franks and the Christians, just as, but lately,

Maurontius, Duke of Arles, had summoned to Provence, against Charles Martel,

the Arabs and the Mussulmans.

Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the coming of

spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief

warriors, he began his march toward the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and

halted at Casseneuil, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to

celebrate there the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his

expedition thence. As he had but lately done for his campaign in Italy

against the Lombards, he divided his forces into two armies: one composed of

Austrasians, Neustrians, Burgundians, and divers German contingents, and

commanded by Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain by the valley of

Roncesvalles, in the western Pyrenees, and make for Pampeluna; the other,

consisting of Provencals, Septimanians, Lombards, and other populations of

the South, under the command of Duke Bernard, who had already distinguished

himself in Italy, had orders to penetrate into Spain by the eastern Pyrenees,

to receive on the march the submission of Gerona and Barcelona, and not to

halt till they were before Saragossa, where the two armies were to form a

junction, and which Ibn-al-Arabi had promised to give up to the King of the

Franks. According to this plan, Charlemagne had to traverse the territories

of Aquitaine and Vasconia, domains of Duke Lupus II, son of Duke Waifre, so

long the foe of Pepin the Short, a Merovingian by descent, and, in all these

qualities, little disposed to favor Charlemagne. However, the march was

accomplished without difficulty. The King of the Franks treated his powerful

vassal well; and Duke Lupus swore to him afresh, "or for the first time,"

says M. Fauriel, "submission and fidelity; but the event soon proved that it

was not without umbrage or without all the feelings of a true son of Waifre

that he saw the Franks and the son of Pepin so close to him."

The aggressive campaign was an easy and a brilliant one. Charles with

his army entered Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles without encountering any

obstacle. On his arrival before Pampeluna the Arab governor surrendered the

place to him, and Charlemagne pushed forward vigorously to Saragossa. But

there fortune changed. The presence of foreigners and Christians on the soil

of Spain caused a suspension of interior quarrels among the Arabs, who rose

in mass, at all points, to succor Saragossa. The besieged defended

themselves with obstinacy; there was more scarcity of provisions among the

besiegers than inside the place; sickness broke out among them; they were

incessantly harassed from without; and rumors of a fresh rising among the

Saxons reached Charlemagne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To decide the

King of the Franks upon an abandonment of the siege, they offered him "an

immense quantity of gold," say the chroniclers, hostages, and promises of

homage and fidelity. Appearances had been saved; Charlemagne could say, and

even perhaps believe, that he had pushed his conquests as far as the Ebro; he

decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion to recross the

Pyrenees. On arriving before Pampeluna Charlemagne had its walls completely

razed to the ground, "in order that," as he said, "that city might not be

able to revolt." The troops entered those same passes of Roncesvalles which

they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks before; and the advance-guard

and the main body of the army were already clear of them. The account of

what happened shall be given in the words of Eginhard, the only contemporary

historian whose account, free from all exaggeration, can be considered

authentic. "The King," he says, "brought back his army without experiencing

any loss, save that at the summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from

the perfidy of the Vascons (Basques). While the army of the Franks,

embarrassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to

advance in one long close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest

of the mountain - for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are

covered is favorable to ambuscade - descend and fall suddenly on the

baggage-train and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to cover

all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of the valley. There

took place a fight in which the Franks were killed to a man. The Basques,

after having plundered the baggage-train, profited by the night which had

come on to disperse rapidly. They owed all their success in this engagement

to the lightness of their equipment and to the nature of the spot where the

action took place; the Franks, on the contrary, being heavily armed and in an

unfavorable position, struggled against too many disadvantages. Eginhard,

master of the household of the King; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland,

prefect of the marches of Brittany, fell in this engagement. There were no

means, at the time, of taking revenge for this check; for, after their sudden

attack, the enemy dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining

any trace of the direction in which they should be sought for."

History says no more; but in the poetry of the people there is a longer

and a more faithful memory than in the court of kings. The disaster of

Roncesvalles and the heroism of the warriors who perished there, became in

France the object of popular sympathy and the favorite topic for the exercise

of the popular fancy. The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in its great

beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears

witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incident in

the history of Charlemagne. Four centuries later the comrades of William the

Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England,

struck up The Song of Roland, "to prepare themselves for victory or death,"

says M. Vitel in his vivid estimate and able translation of this poetical

monument of the manners and first impulses toward chivalry of the Middle

Ages. There is no determining how far history must be made to participate in

these reminiscences of national feeling; but, assuredly, the figures of

Roland and Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin, and the pious, unsophisticated, and

tender character of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy

of a poet or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical

narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be